


Back At Your Door

by noblydonedonnanoble



Series: The Road We Never Drove On [6]
Category: Doctor Who RPF
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-11
Updated: 2012-07-11
Packaged: 2017-11-09 15:10:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/456890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noblydonedonnanoble/pseuds/noblydonedonnanoble





	Back At Your Door

_I’ve reached a point where I’m not even surprised when he shows up. I don’t exactly_ expect _him, either, because if I expected him I would very often be disappointed. His appearances are unpredictable and very often sporadic, sometimes three times in one week and sometimes not again for_ months _. So it’s not that I expect him._

_It’s just that I’m never surprised._

_Sometimes it’s because of a fight. Sometimes he misses me._

_There have been a few occasions where I’ve seriously wondered if he came just because he was bored. Bored of his same life, bored of being a family man._

_And compared to all of that, I’m certainly not boring._

 

                The first time he showed up at my flat, it was right after I’d come home from filming _The Office_. I actually was planning on calling him the next day, seeing if he wanted to have dinner, so when he showed up I was pleasantly surprised. I was even more surprised when, as soon as I opened the door, he pulled me into a fierce hug. “It’s been a while,” he mumbled into my hair.

                Yes, it had been. Once upon a time, we hardly went a day without at least chatting on the phone, but while I was in America we’d gone months without speaking.

                I’d really missed him. I buried my face into the spot between his neck and his shoulder. He smelled wonderful—of course, David had a tendency of smelling wonderful—and I couldn’t help but cling to him. “To what do I owe this pleasant surprise?”

                David released me (much to my dismay) and nudged my door closed. “Heard you were back, and I wanted to welcome you home.” He held up a brown paper bag with a grin. “I brought some food, ‘cause I figured you probably haven’t bothered to do the shopping yet.”

                Of course not. The only non-suspicious thing I had sitting in my cupboard was a box of pasta, and I wasn’t about to go near the stove in my still slightly jet lagged condition. He knew me too well. I couldn’t help but grin. “C’mon, you. Let’s go eat then.”

                I had a loveseat on my balcony, and we sat there together, eating, talking, and looking out over the city. One of his arms was slung casually over the back of the chair, and even though I was aware of his fingers toying with my hair I didn’t say anything because I’d always kind of liked it when he played with my hair. And after we finished eating, we both set our plates down on the floor below us. I allowed my head to rest on his shoulder, and I heard him exhale a bit louder than normal but other than that he didn’t react.

                “I don’t think you should go back to America,” he said after a while.

                “Why not?” I could have acted indignant, but I could tell he wasn’t really serious, and we hadn’t seen each other in so long that I wasn’t really in the mood to tease him.

                “Well…” David grabbed one of my hands, pulling it into his lap. “With you gone, I can’t show up at your door randomly like this, can I? I’ve missed you a lot, Catherine. I’ve missed my best friend.”

                I wrapped my arms around him. “Well, you’re always welcome to show up at my door randomly. Just for future reference.”

                He pressed his lips to the crown of my head. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

                It was a wonderful night.

                As we were standing in my kitchen, cleaning our dishes, something happened.

                I handed him a plate to dry, and his fingers brushed mine. I disregarded it, because I was used to us randomly bumping and touching. I turned back to the sink, began to rinse one of the glasses.

                But then I heard the plate clatter on the counter, felt one of his hands on my wrist and the other on my neck. I involuntarily let the glass fall back into the water with a splash as he spun me to face him.

                And then David was kissing me. His tongue worked its way into my mouth and it had been forever since I’d experienced the taste of him. It was fantastic, and as he nipped and pulled on my lower lip I moaned slightly, my hands going up to run through his hair.

                It took me far longer than I’d like to admit to remember that, well, I was kissing a married man. More specifically, a man who wasn’t married to me. I pushed him back just as suddenly as he’d begun to kiss me in the first place. “Why are you doing this?” I gasped, before I’d even had the opportunity to catch my breath—because after kissing David, I always needed to catch my breath.

                “I told you.” He sounded rather flustered, and in spite of myself I loved knowing that I could make him that way with just a kiss. “I’ve missed you.” He paused. “Besides which, I love you.”

                “You can’t…” I swallowed hard, looking him in the eye. I tried to ignore the trickle of water coming from his now-damp hair, made that way by my soapy fingers, but it was quite distracting as it trailed down his cheekbone and eventually reached his jaw. “David, you got married. Remember? You made a choice. Don’t fuck things up for yourself. Aren’t you…” I furrowed my brow, and something about my expression made him smile. I didn’t want him smiling. This was not an occasion to be smiling. “Aren’t you happy, David?”

                “Questionable,” he murmured. “At this second? Very. In general? Not particularly.”

                He shouldn’t have said that. I wanted to hug him, but then he probably would kiss me. And I wasn’t sure I had the self-control to pull away from him again. “Does Georgia know that?” He nodded. “And you haven’t simply tried to fix things? Marriages need work, David. I know I said you can come see me whenever you want, but if you’re just doing it because you’re scared of fixing your problems… I don’t know.”

                “That…” He closed some of the distance I’d managed to put between us. “Is not what I’m doing.”

                I chuckled. “Really? Then what is it you’re doing?”

                For a moment, it looked like he was going to drop it. Maybe, I thought, maybe he would just tell me about his troubles and hug me goodbye at the door and go home to his wife.

                As if my life was that simple. “I’m staring at the woman who means more to me than anything in the world. Wondering how hard she would slap me if I kissed her again, because Jesus Christ I want to kiss her again.”

                Why did he have to say that? He had to say it. Before I could lose my nerve, I looked him straight in the eye and whispered, “Your face is too pretty for her to be willing to slap it.”

                Of course I expected it when he kissed me again.

                And this time, I didn’t resist.

 

                _Who knows if Georgia’s aware of me or not. When David comes, she’s the one thing we avoid discussing. I think it would be hard to miss the fact that her husband spends so many nights away from home._

_The fact that he leaves my place in the mornings smelling like me probably doesn’t help either._

_Occasionally, I wonder if they’ve fought about it—those nights he disappears, sometimes three times in one week and sometimes not again for months._

 

                It had been maybe a month and a half (fine, it was a month and 10 days. So what if I’d counted) since the last time. By this point, I was beginning to grow desensitized to the whole thing. I was attached to him. Hell, I was in love with him. But when he came over with the clear intention of just fucking me, I had to un-attach myself.

                This time, instead of ringing the bell, he knocked on the door. Or banged, perhaps banged on the door would be more appropriate.

                “David. What a surprise.”

                Of course, David was not the surprise; it was his mood. I never knew quite what shape he was going to be in when he showed up at my flat. Perhaps sleepy, perhaps excited, perhaps horribly intoxicated and depressed.

                He was absolutely fuming.

                For the first time since _that first time_ , I considered telling him no. I considered sitting down with him and making him actually talk about what was going on.

                But I knew that he didn’t want to tell me about Georgia. Not so deep down, I knew that I didn’t want to hear about her.

                It occurred to me that I wasn’t going to ever find out what had driven David to me on this particular occasion. And even though this was common, it suddenly made me very sad.

                That night, he tugged so hard on my shirt to remove it that some of the material actually ripped apart.

                His breath, so hot on my exposed skin, gave me goosebumps. His tongue, so teasing, made me gasp.

                A few times, he bit me so hard that I was almost certain he was going to draw blood (although he never did). In return, I scratched him, bit and sucked on patches of skin with every intention of leaving a mark; if I didn’t make him bleed, I was certainly at least going to make it clear that when he ran away from home at night, he wasn’t just moping around.

                He began to thrust into me, and his expletives echoed around the room. My own moans soon increased in volume.

                Looking into his eyes, I thought about the words he always saved for last, waiting until he was so far gone that they certainly lost some—if not all—of their true meaning.

                I couldn’t remember, anymore, the last time he’d said, “I love you,” when he wasn’t coming inside me.

                As we both neared a climax, I kissed him, hard, pulling his hair and keeping his tongue occupied.

                Because I didn’t want to hear those three words again. Not if it was purely because I was willing to go to bed with him.

                When he lay back, I curled up against him and allowed my head to rest on his chest. He always liked that. It wasn’t cuddling, but it was an acknowledgment of sex. It was a way of silently declaring that we didn’t suddenly just appear naked on a bed together, but that we instead made this choice.

                Yeah, there was a lot of stuff David said without actually saying it.

                Meanwhile, his fingers brushed through my hair. He told me a lot, when we first met, how much he loved my hair. He said that it was stunning.

                Well, he also said that I was stunning. But he was absolutely fixated on my hair, and in that moment I found myself pleased because some things never change.

 

                _He does remember, sometimes, the concept of friendship. He’ll show up with a movie, or a book—because he loves it when I read to him, loves curling up with his head in my lap while I come up with voices for every character and make him laugh. We cook dinner together, and he teases me for having trouble simply grating cheese or slicing onions._

_And on such occasions, he spends dinner asking me about my life. He wants to hear about the shows I’m going to be a part of, what films I’m going to have a tiny appearance in. He wants to hear about Erin, and my mother._

_Despite the hours we spend as friends, it’s inevitable._

_We still always end up in my bedroom._

                On my birthday, he brought me chocolates. “I would have brought flowers, but I wanted to make you smile—I didn’t want you to hit me.”

                I did smile, and pulled him into a tight hug. “You’re lovely, David. Thank you.” He was the only man who ever remembered to _not_ bring me flowers.

                “And I’ve decided to cook you a gourmet dinner. As long as you sit in the kitchen and talk to me while I’m puttering around. Because I need someone to tell me how sexy I look in your frilly apron and my chef’s hat.” Behind his joke was something else, but I did my best to ignore that, at least for the moment.

                While he cooked, I did stay in the kitchen and talk to him. I sat on a stool right near the stove, because David always liked feeling like a big important chef and according to him, big important chefs needed someone by their side to taste-test everything.

                As he was asking me about the seasoning on the meat, he held up a small piece for me to try. He didn’t pull away quite fast enough, and his finger almost got caught between my lips; I couldn’t really say for sure whether that was his intention or mine.

                And then, when he had me taste the sauce, I saw him watching my mouth a bit too close.

                “You have the weirdest way of celebrating your birthday.”

                I could see what he meant. We were in my kitchen, eating what could hardly be described as a gourmet meal (regardless of what David said). I hadn’t even bothered to clear off my dining room table for the occasion. “I just don’t see the point in getting excited over being a year older than I was yesterday. My birthday’s nothing but another day.”

                “But, I mean…” He cocked his head at me. “If I hadn’t come over, you would have just spent tonight all by yourself.” There was something in his eyes that I couldn’t quite define. An easy definition would just be to say that he looked sad, but it was something more than that. He looked… lost. He looked like he was nowhere and everywhere all at once.

                “Well, Twig’s bringing Erin by tomorrow. She and I might go out for dinner.”

                He smiled and nodded. “That’s exciting. You haven’t seen her in a while, right? Last time I was here it’d been a few weeks.”

                “I’ve had her three times since then.”

                The statement made the room suddenly feel too cramped. David seemed to realize that he’d said the wrong thing, and his eyes widened slightly, but he didn’t say anything. There wasn’t really anything he could say that would make it better. And judging by the fact that his default phrase was, “I’m sorry,” I was glad that instead he chose to keep his mouth shut.

                Except then he did say it. “I’m sorry.”

                And I almost went for my default phrase. “It’s okay,” I almost said. “I understand,” I almost said.

                But it was my birthday, and I was tired of everything. Because it wasn’t okay. I didn’t understand.

                “You’re sorry? Really? Don’t tell me you’re sorry, because clearly you’re not.”

                He looked utterly bemused. “But I am sorry, Catherine.”

                “If you were sorry, you’d stop coming here. Or you’d come here far more often. Or, I dunno, you’d _break things off with your wife_ if you’re so bloody unhappy that you have to come here now to feel anything.” I watched him flounder about for something to say, but I wasn’t done. “Except now _I_ hardly feel anything thanks to you. And you don’t even see it. Or if you do, you do a very good job of ignoring it because David, if I were in your position, if I saw you hurting as much as I’m hurting, _I would stop and I would fix things_. _I would make up my fucking mind_.”

                “I didn’t…”

                “Of course, I’m sorry, of course you didn’t notice. You’re a man; as long as the sex is good you’re okay with ignoring feelings. Pardon me for thinking that a man who once claimed to be my best friend might be different.”

                David was hurting—I could see it. And I felt victorious, somehow, because after him hurting me for so long I was the one who had the upper hand.

                Somehow, though, when he stood up and walked out with a whispered, “Goodbye,” I still felt heartbroken. I’d taken maybe a bite of my food, but I tossed it out anyway and just ordered pizza instead.

                The next day, I gave Erin all of the chocolates because I couldn’t even look at the box without wanting to burst into tears.

 

                _It’s not okay._

_And I don’t understand._

_And I think the worst part is that I almost expected him to stay._

_I almost expected him to say that I was his choice. That he wanted me._

_Why can’t he want me?_

 

                A month later (well, 27 days, but who’s counting), David calls me on the phone. “I’m coming.”

                I don’t know if it’s because I want to see his face or because I’m so stunned that he actually thought to call, but I just say, “Okay.”

                And before I know it he’s standing in front of me and I’m holding the door open and the first thing that comes out of my mouth is, “What?”

                He looks immediately taken aback. “Is this a bad time?”

                “If it were a bad time, I would have told you not to come when you called.” I raise my eyebrows at him. “Why _did_ you call? You never call. Besides which, I didn’t really expect you to be coming back again period, let alone with an actual warning.” Although I appreciated the warning, because I’d been sulking around in my abysmal-looking-but-comfortable pajamas and I was able to change.

                “Wanted to try something new,” he murmurs. He seems to be very intrigued by my bare feet. Should I have put shoes on? I probably should have put shoes on.

                “Why?” It sounds rude, but I want to be a little rude right now.

                “Well, I… Jesus, Catherine, can I come in and we can talk about it sitting down? Please?”

                I almost say no, but I step back and allow him to come in. I would take him to the kitchen, but I get the feeling that he doesn’t want to be back there any more than I want him to be. So I take him to my living room. He sits down on the couch, but I sit in the chair across from him for my own sake—the more distance I can keep between us, the better. He notices this, and I allow him to fidget for a little while before speaking. “So. Why?”

                David clears his throat. “Wh- what you said, last time. I thought about it a lot. And I wanted to come talk to you… well, I wanted to come back almost as soon as I left. But I didn’t, because I wanted to give everything serious consideration. And then when I reached a conclusion… I had to get some things worked out.”

                “Things?” I wonder where he’s going with this.

                The one thing that’s occurred to me… I don’t want to assume yet.

                He nods. “I started by telling Georgia that I wasn’t happy in our relationship anymore.” I wonder if he told her _how long_ he hasn’t been happy in their relationship. But I don’t say anything. “And she and I sat down. We talked about it. For a long time.”

                “And?”

                “Catherine, I’m getting divorced.”

                I feel myself exploding. Everything around me and inside me and _me_ , it all shatters simultaneously as I take in his words. Because I told him off and he went and did something about it. I called him on his shit and he decided he wanted to fix things. I told him to figure out what he wanted, and _he actually did_.

                Fucking hell I love him.

                “Oh.” I’m scared to say anything else because if I try, I’m not sure what will slip out.

                He looks slightly disappointed by my reaction, but he continues on. “And… well, I was hoping… maybe… if you were willing… I was hoping we might be able to start over. Perhaps with dinner?”

                Dinner. A date. A date with David.

                We’ll be able to go out together. He won’t just see me when home is unbearable anymore. In fact, he wants to make me home. I can see it in his eyes, that hope.

                David’s holding his heart out to me and I feel like sobbing.

                “Yeah. Dinner sounds wonderful.”


End file.
